How Not to Have a Tailgate Party

Tom Ritch via AJC

When I read Sara Snow's post Green Eyes On: 3 Ways To Throw A Greener Tailgate my first reaction was "compostable disposables? why not washables?" and "Recycling bins? how about zero waste?" Then it was pointed out very graphically how bad a tailgate can get; shown above is the aftermath of the University of Georgia football game two weeks ago. Chip Towers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes it:

Whole tailgate tents left half-standing. Abandoned portable grills. Urination in campus doorways. Defecation. Trash strewn everywhere.

Nothing unusual about this, either:

"What happened last week is typical," said George Stafford, UGA's associate vice president for auxiliary and administrative services. "It takes 200 to 300 people on Sunday morning to pick up and bag up all the trash, throw it on a truck and haul it out to the landfill. A typical day game produces 35 to 40 tons of trash. A night SEC game like this we have 70 or more tons."

Sometimes we can be doctrinaire and complain that small steps are pointless. But clearly these students at the University of Georgia have trouble putting one foot in front of the other, let alone taking small steps toward sustainability.

Perhaps Sara's suggestions of composting and actually collecting and separating garbage should become the new normal at the University of Georgia. More destruction at UGA tailgaters warned to clean up their trash